Hasn't been a problem in the past -- but we store more water than 3 gallons per . . .
Getting ready for the Big One
Sep 15th 2005 | LOS ANGELES
From The Economist print edition
California looks better prepared than Louisiana was; and so it needs to be
EARTHQUAKES, s, floods and mudslides: by almost any criterion California, the nation's most populous state, is also its most vulnerable to natural disaster. And perhaps to man-made disaster, too: Los Angeles Airport, the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, San Francisco's Golden Gate and Bay bridges and Disneyland are all targets for ists.
This week, when most of Los Angeles suddenly suffered an electricity blackout, the immediate fear was al-Qaeda. That was misplaced, but it raised an obvious question: faced by a massive disaster, how well would California cope?
It is frighteningly easy to give an alarming answer. The Southern California Earthquake Centre reckons that there is an 80% to 90% chance of a tremor of seven or higher on the Richter scale hitting Los Angeles within the next 20 years. According to the US Geological Survey, an earthquake of that magnitude would kill up to 18,000 in Los Angeles; in San Francisco, a repeat of the 1906 earthquake might kill 5,800 (almost double the last Big One). Six in ten Californians live in areas of high earthquake risk; in Los Angeles County, just about everybody does.
Almost as worrying to the planners, the pipelines and aqueducts that bring natural gas and water from northern California to Los Angeles and San Diego run south across the San Andreas and other fault lines. Meanwhile, one respected geologist says there is a two-in-three chance in the next 50 years of an earthquake or flood breaching the levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, with disastrous consequences for California's agriculture.